There is a lot of common misinformation in that.
A deep cycle was designed for low amperage draw, time was its main application was a trolling motor on a boat, they can be discharged and recharged many times but are not designed to be starting motor batteries, that’s true.
But a winch is a starter motor and it draws high amps. So most of that is just marketing, the fact is the red top is a better choice in a winch application, but it does require an upgraded alternator to extend the battery life.
Either way you are going to pay for it, Yellows are more expensive, however they can’t deliver the proper power that winches require, so the winch runs hotter and that shortens the life of the winch components. On other hand quality high amp alternators are expensive but you can run less expensive batteries and it will work better with lower quality winches, this is because you will have more power available to the winch so it will run cooler.
The info on gel batteries is complete BS, they work quite well in starting applications, and in fact we have run then on 12:1 compression with no issues.
The fact is this, Optima was the best battery in the world, we have been building high amp alternators since 85’ and we were fans from day one, but the company that acquired Optima started cutting corners and the battery is not half as good as it once was, if I am getting a deal or the customer specifically request one we will use it otherwise we will not.
But if you are buying the Optima propaganda about deep cycle batteries, Google Fullriver or Kinetik, cost you more but they are much better.
